The invention relates to an aerial ropeway transport installation, notably a gondola lift or chair-lift having vehicles, notably cars or chairs suspended from grips coupling them to the rope, having roller sheaves, said grips being able to be detached from the aerial rope in the terminals and to run on a transfer and/or parking track before being recoupled to the rope, said track comprising stright sections and curved sections and a means of driving the vehicles.
In an installation of the kind mentioned, the vehicles run at high speed on the line, being driven by the aerial rope and at low speed in the terminal after they have been detached from the rope. The vehicles detached from the rope run on the transfer track of the terminal, bumping into one another frequently, and it has already been proposed to equip the transfer track with a drive chain maintaining a certain distance between the vehicles. This gap is sufficient to avoid any contact or collision between the vehicles which follow one another, even on the curved sections of the track, but it reduces the number of vehicles present on the track at any one time. The clearance between the vehicles in the loading and unloading areas may be a drawback. The same problem arises for the parking tracks equipped with drive means where the gap between the vehicles on the straight sections reduces the storage capacity.